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CN · China · –

Dongliao County fire, 24 October 2026 东辽县 · Dongliao County, Xifeng County

Dying down · last detection 4 Nov 2026, 17:13 UTC

The fire started on 24 October 2026 in Dongliao County, China, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,219 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 218 in China in 2026, of 1095.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in October 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

The power measured by the satellite is low (8.6 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Is it still active?

No detections since 4 Nov 2026, 17:13 UTC. That usually means no flame is visible from space any more, although hotspots may remain. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.

Burnt area
3,219ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
24 Oct 2026 – 4 Nov 2026
Municipalities hit
2
counties
Started on
24 Oct
2026
Heat detections
84
in a single hotspot: 9 MW
Danger at start
6
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
26MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Oct4 Nov
4 Nov 2026

How it evolved, day by day

24 Oct 2026 · 16 MW · 5 25 Oct 2026 · 0 MW · 0 27 Oct 2026 · 2 MW · 2 28 Oct 2026 · 0 MW · 0 29 Oct 2026 · 18 MW · 18 30 Oct 2026 · 100 MW · 48 2 Nov 2026 · 10 MW · 2 3 Nov 2026 · 32 MW · 7 4 Nov 2026 · 3 MW · 2
24 Oct 27 Oct 30 Oct 4 Nov

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

14°high
67km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.3 mm on 5 Nov.

This area had burned before

22% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4 ha in 2023, 87 ha in 2024, 719 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 724 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2% of the area of London (32 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Dongliao County 东辽县 where it started
    3,104 ha reached on 24 Oct
    1.3 %
  2. Xifeng County 西丰县
    113 ha reached on 25 Oct
    0.0 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area60 ha
Residents≈ 7,100

Inside the perimeter there were about 60 hectares of built-up land and about 7,100 residents (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

The weather day by day

ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
24 Oct 13.8 °C 43 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
25 Oct 12.3 °C 18 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
26 Oct 9.8 °C 35 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
27 Oct 4.9 °C 23 % 67 km/h 0.1 mm High 30
28 Oct 10.2 °C 29 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
29 Oct 11.5 °C 23 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
30 Oct 12.5 °C 27 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
31 Oct 2.0 °C 30 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
1 Nov 5.0 °C 42 % 31 km/h 2.4 mm Very low 1
2 Nov 4.5 °C 42 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 2
3 Nov 6.8 °C 28 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 4
4 Nov 13.6 °C 45 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
5 Nov after 9.7 °C 54 % 45 km/h 1.3 mm Very low 3

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 17 Oct 2026
After · 4 Nov 2026

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 29 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 42 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 30: 2.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak42 µg/m³
Days over the guideline4 days
PM10116 µg/m³
Optical depth1.04
22 Oct24 Oct26 Oct28 Oct30 Oct
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 84Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Date and timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in China

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Dongliao County fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 24 October 2026 to 4 November 2026 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 October 2026 to 4 November 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,219 hectares (32.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Dongliao County (3,104 ha, 1.3 %); Xifeng County (113 ha, 0.0 %).
Is the Dongliao County fire still active?
No fire detections since 4 Nov 2026, 17:13 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 13.8 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 67 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of China (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

Where to verify it

A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.

Emergency number: 119 · Emergency number and official warnings

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 31 October 2026.
  1. Area: 2,850 → 3,179 ha.
  2. Page published (2,850 ha).

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

Does something look wrong on this page?

This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 119.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 28 October 2026 to 4 November 2026. 84 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.
  • Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

How we build fire pages: methodology

Where this data comes from

The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM3 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.